The Role of Literacy in Tilting the Balance from
Vulnerability and High-risk Behaviors to Resiliency and Sustainable Behaviors

Ray Wolpow

Western Washington University

Eunice N. Askov

The Pennsylvania State University

Many of today’s students are labeled as
“at-risk,” “disadvantaged,” “vulnerable,” and/or “underprivileged” and do not
meet literacy standards. Meanwhile, in many of these students’ neighborhoods,
low-literate parents bearing similar labels enroll in community-based family
literacy programs to help their children develop educational skills for
academic success and seek to improve their own reading and writing abilities.

Engagement in reading may
substantially compensate for low family income and educational background and
engaged readers might sometimes overcome obstacles to achievement (Guthrie
& Wigfield, 2000). Further, students engaged in reading achieve more when
they have self-efficacy or confidence in how they read to learn (Guthrie,
2004). The foundation for such learning requires positive human relationships
and when “students feel disconnected, they won’t succeed” (Santa, 2006, p.
467). Even so, the challenge of overcoming obstacles to develop a sense of
self-efficacy may be formidable. Many students and their families carry burdens
of poverty that often include histories of violence, abuse, and neglect and in
many cases they are disconnected from a sense of community that nurtures
learning.

In this paper, we examine
additional resources and strategies that may be effective in creating programs
to address challenges facing secondary and adult literacy educators. Our
guiding questions are: (a) What role can literacy instruction play in assisting
youth and their families cope with challenging school, family and community
situations, (b) within the confines of our role as literacy educators how might
we assist those who endeavor to tilt the balance of student behavior from
vulnerability and high-risk towards resiliency and sustainable behaviors, and
(c) what aspects of teacher preparation—specifically, what knowledge, skills
and dispositions on the part of those who teach reading and writing—might lead
to increased student success?

To address these questions, in
the following sections we first offer a brief overview of childhood and
adolescent vulnerability. Second, we summarize the literature of childhood
resiliency and related pedagogies to provide insights into adaptive factors and
methods that lead to social and academic competence. Third, we explore the role
of literacy in fostering sustainable resiliency among participants of two types
of programs: coping skills and community based family literacy.

At-Risk and Out of Balance

There is a considerable body of
data indicating that many U.S. students live in a culture of familial and
societal violence and suffering. Juveniles and young adults are the most
victimized age group in the United States. Juveniles experience non-fatal
violent victimization (e.g., rape, sexual assault, aggravated assault; robbery)
at a rate 2.5 times higher than adults (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). Further,
children are the victims of 2/3s of forcible rapes (Kilpatrick, Edmunds, &
Seymour, 1992). Additionally, homicide and suicide are leading causes of death
for adolescents. For example, in 2002, homicide was the fourth leading cause of
death for children ages 1 through 11 and the third cause of death for youth
ages 12-17. Further, instances of adolescent suicide, an indicator of
suffering, isolation and despair, have shown significant increases in the last
two decades (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006).

Attempts by young people and
their families to restore balance to their lives after victimization are often
hindered and sometimes compounded by challenges of severe poverty. In the United States, where we have the highest rate of childhood poverty among developed nations
(Berliner, 2005), nearly one third of working families have incomes below the
amount needed to meet basic needs (Allegretto, 2005). And, poor populations are
often impacted by natural catastrophes most acutely, as witnessed after
Hurricane Katrina (Metz et. al, 2005).

What are young people to do?
Those who live in families that mistreat them, who live in dangerous
neighborhoods, and who attend school with hostile and delinquent peers cannot
choose to leave. It is this absence of choice over people and environments that
increase juveniles’ vulnerability to victimization and consequential
participation in related high-risk behaviors (Berman, Kurtines, Silverman,
& Serafini, 1996; Hashima & Finkelhor, 1999). The consequences can be
devastating. Problems that may result include health and educational issues,
including poor self-esteem, depression, attachment, personality and sexual
disorders, and reduced academic performance (Kilpatrick et al., 2003; Van der
Kolk, Perry & Herman, 1991).

And, what are educators to do?
Literacy teachers are generally only trained to teach language-based
communications. What are they to do when academic performance and learning is
disrupted by violence, suffering, isolation, and despair? We begin to address
these questions in the next sections of this paper.

Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries for Insights and Strategies

The desire to teach
in a manner that enables children to more effectively cope with stressors in
their lives has led some educators to adopt a restorative pedagogy grounded in
“childhood resiliency,” a body of research that calls for a shift in thinking
from established pedagogies of what is “wrong” with “problem” children to the
study of what is “right” with them, that is, what it is about children and
their social environments that enables them to adapt and in some cases thrive
despite traumatic stressors in their lives (Benard, 2004; Werner 2006; Wright
& Masten, 2006). Longitudinal studies of populations from urban, suburban,
and rural communities have been conducted with the resilient offspring of
psychotic parents, alcoholic parents, abusive mothers, divorced parents,
teenage parents, and with children raised under conditions of extreme poverty,
detailed subsequently. Further, cross-cultural universality of individual and
protective factors may be found in anecdotal narrative studies of the
resiliency of abandoned, orphaned, and refugee children who survived war
horrors (Ayala-Canales, 1984; Hemmendinger & Krell, 2000; Heskin, 1980;
Moskovitz, 1983; Rachman, 1978; Rosenblatt, 1983; Sheehy, 1987; Werner, 1990).

One of the most important factors
associated with effective coping is the support of “kith and kin” (families,
alternative caregivers, communities, peer groups, and schools) that often play
significant roles in providing external support to foster resiliency.
Conclusions from Werner and Smith’s (1992) 30-year longitudinal study of
resiliency in high-risk children emphasized the critical function of having a
bond with at least one adult in the family or with one adult in the community.
While the mother is often the most significant adult in early childhood, safe
passage through the tumultuous years of adolescence is often attributed to
bonding with significant non-parental adults such as teachers and school staff
(Smink, 1990; Taylor & Thomas, 2002). Thus, schools may be in an ideal
position to provide students and their families with the social processes and
mechanisms that might foster intrapersonal and interpersonal competence.

In addition, the literature of resilience
provides educators with several examples of restorative instructional
methodologies that require teachers to always empower, never disempower
(Herman, 1992), embed instruction in the “spiritual qualities of the heart –
courage, commitment, belief, and intuitive understanding” (Katz & St.
Denis, 1991, p. 28), model the conviction that life makes sense despite the
inevitable adversities each of us encounters (Salzman, 2003) and teach and
learn in ways that are mutually transformative (Fox & Serlin, 1996; Wolpow
& Askov, 1998, 2001).

This being the case, how can
teachers help their students tilt the balance from vulnerability to resiliency?
To see how these may be actualized, and to illustrate the potential role that
literacy plays in such a process, in the following sections of this paper we
examine a coping skills program in a rural community and the movement towards
community-based family literacy programs in urban areas.

Teaching Coping Skills to At-Risk Adolescents

Approximately
1,800 students attend Mount Vernon High School, located in a rapidly developing
rural community of northwestern Washington State. More than twenty years ago,
aware of the growing numbers of students who returned to the high school after
involvement with Juvenile Court, Child Protective Services, in-patient drug and
alcohol centers, and other community agencies serving the needs of fractured
families, the Mount Vernon School district instituted a Coping Skills Program.
The program takes the form of a class of fifteen to twenty students that meets
daily. The class is facilitated by a certified secondary teacher who is also a
qualified drug and alcohol counselor with more than 30 years experience working
with “at-risk” populations. Its curriculum meets Washington State standards in reading, writing, communication, health, and social studies. Students who
maintain membership for a semester earn credit comparable to any other social
science elective. A longitudinal qualitative case study of this program
revealed significant decreases in substance abuse, arrests, and pregnancies,
with concurrent increases in school attendance, academic performance, family
resolutions, and healthy peer relationships. More than forty percent of
students who enroll in this class graduated from high school (Fox, 1995).

The learning
objectives of the coping skills class include: “To teach the skills necessary
to cope with an ‘at-risk society’; to learn alternatives to participation in
our national epidemic of violence; to offer coping strategies to students
experiencing the struggle to forge intrapersonal meaning and social competency;
and to provide a daily, therapeutic forum within which students learn to cope
with dysfunctional selves, families, and schools.” The curriculum is designed
to help students identify and practice basic skills that tend to foster
personal resiliency. These include practice in “feeling management skills,”
especially fear and anger; critical and creative problem strategies, personal
learning and teaching skills, ways to recognize and alter self-destructive
behaviors; bonding and trusting exercises – especially with drug independent
peers; and instruction in “fair-fighting,” leadership, internal control, and
effective communication.

The Role of Literacy in Teaching Coping Skills

Although the
instructional methods employed in this class most closely resemble a
therapeutic “support group” with encounters and discussion, there is a strong
literacy component. Upon entering the class, students are instructed that they
each already own the textbook. Their text is the story of their own lives and
the task of the course is for them to learn to read and rewrite their life
text. As with the reading of most literary texts, readers can understand their
own stories best through insightful interpretation of the language used by the
writers. The coping skills teacher encourages students to listen carefully for
word choice and models judicious use of literary devices, especially metaphor,
when attempting to make meaning. For example, when students say, “I don’t
know” they are encouraged to dig deeper for words to explain the “dragon with
which they are wrestling.” One student, resigned to separation from an
absentee parent, spoke of this relationship as “a quiet wasteland, dry without
the rain of any positive expectation.”

Much of the
reading and writing done by students involves keeping journals in which they
monitor “life support” inventories. Specifically, students are required to
examine and write about what they have done each week to maintain or improve
their physical fitness, nutrition, sleep and rest, assertiveness skills,
centering and solitude, fun, meeting of goals, support given and received, and
creativity. In so doing, they provide themselves and their teacher with “. . .
detailed operationalization of propositions regarding positive changes in
relation to self, family, and education” (Fox, 1995, p. 150).

Discussion of
life-support inventories heightened student awareness of the role they play in
creating their own vulnerability and/or resiliency. Literacy skills, especially
those involved in keeping a personal journal, play a key role in assisting the
development of the dispositional skills of assertiveness, anger control,
self-reflection, and problem solving. The following are a few examples from
journals shared by students:

When I am feeling hurt, angry,
hate, resentment or disappointment. . . taking the time to review anger-filled
interactions . . . writing out the dialogue which invited my angry response
[enables me] to identify when I gave up assertiveness and chose hostility.

I’m growing; using the power of
my choices not to make things worse . . . [I’ve learned that] assertiveness is
better than madness.

I’m learning how to fair-fight,
how to reprogram my vocabulary to help me achieve better and higher goals . . .
. I’m learning how not to be derogatory toward myself . . . I’ve learned how
to eat, you know, when you’re doing a lot of drugs, you don’t eat . . . .
Believe me, I eat now. I exercise every day. I only have 17% body fat and I
do have a positive feeling about myself.

(Fox,
1995, pp.167-182)

The Role of Literacy in Teaching Non-Violent Communication and Social
Competence

The lives of
“at-risk” students are full of crisis and drama – parents who use drugs and
abuse their children raise young people with anger and distrust. Students often
enter the coping skills classroom near rage or implosion due to parent or
teacher actions that are perceived by them as unjust and/or threatening. At
these times, students benefit from instruction received in Rosenberg’s (2003)
“Giraffe Talk,” a paradigm for non-violent verbal and written communication.
This metaphor is derived from the facts that giraffes have the largest heart
among mammals and assertively stick their necks out to get what they need. As
illustrated in the following table, giraffe talk requires students to first
name what they have observed, then state what they are feeling, to then explain
that feeling, and finally to make a request.

Giraffe Talk

When I observe . . .

Describe events without using evaluative judgments,
labeling, or name-calling. What events triggered your response? What did
you see, hear, or witness?

I feel . . .

Name the feelings that were stirred in you. Was it fear,
sadness, anger, hurt, curiosity, rejection, excitement…?

Because I . . .

A statement of what I think you are thinking (or believe)
about me. (For example: Because I imagine you think I am dumb. Because I
imagine that you think it is funny when I am hurting. Because I imagine that
you don’t care about me…etc.)

I want (Would you be willing to) . .

A request for concrete, specific actions that the other
person can do to help you meet your needs. The request needs to be
positively framed and should not be a demand, threat, or guilt-shaming
manipulation. The listener to this request has the right to say “no.” If
you don’t get your needs met, move on.

The first author of
this paper has observed dozens of examples of “giraffe talk” used by coping
skills students and ways in which teachers incorporated literacy to help
students reconcile difficult problems. In one such instance a teacher had
humiliated Mariposa (all names presented in this chapter are pseudonyms), a
female student. Mariposa was dealing with struggles at home – most recently her
mother’s alcoholic live-in boyfriend (who she described as someone “who
couldn’t manage to take his morning shower without a beer in hand … the empty
bottle from which seemed to inevitably fly in my direction”).

Mariposa had
managed, for the first time since entering high school, to attend consecutive
weeks of classes, including her 7:30 AM biology class. Mariposa considered this
a significant accomplishment. Inspired and encouraged by the comments of other
coping skills members, she studied hard for a biology test. Mariposa arrived
the day of the test with “sharpened pencils for bubbling-in the Scantron answer
sheet” in hand, as she reported. However, she was a bit shy on sleep because of
what she described as the “drunken scream fest” between her mother and her
boyfriend late into the night before the exam.

Mariposa,
however, missed the teacher’s instructions to bring a pen for writing an essay
on the exam. On the morning of the test, she sensed a derogatory tone in her
teacher’s voice as seh reminded the class they had been told to bring a pen and
a pencil to class. Thus, Mariposa decided not to ask for a pen and completed
both portions of the exam in pencil. When her graded exam was returned all the
multiple-choice questions were marked correct, but her essay earned zero points
because she had not used a pen. She received an overall grade of “F.” Mariposa
was prepared to fly into a rage, the kind of rage that landed her father in
prison – the kind of rage that her mother’s boyfriend consistently used to
bully people to do things his way – the kind of rage that had resulted in
previous school suspensions.

To make a long story
short, after nearly an hour of coping group debriefing and discussion, Mariposa
wrote the following note to her teacher:

Dear Mr. Jones:

When I saw my paper with its
failing grade, I felt embarrassed, hurt and angry. This is because I thought
you were like my father, that you wanted to see me fail. I did study and I was
able to answer each of the multiple choice questions correctly. After talking
with others, I realize that I am at fault for not following your directions. I
used pencil and this was reason to not give me credit for my answer. Would you
be willing to read my essay and tell me if I answered it correctly? I realize
I don’t deserve credit, but I would appreciate any feedback or encouragement
you might provide.

In this case,
dispositional characteristics associated with resiliency (e.g. internal locus
of control, positive self-esteem, autonomy) and coping skills needed to adapt
to stressors (e.g., assertiveness, anger control, self-reflection, problem
solving) were modeled, learned, and applied. Literacy played a significant role
in this process. Despite the inevitable adversities Mariposa was encountering,
by putting pen to paper, this student was empowered to make sense out of her
life.

We think
that it is fortunate for “at-risk” adolescents, such as Mariposa, to have
opportunities to participate in programs that help them to learn coping skills
needed to forge what “intrapersonal meaning and social competency,” as was the
case in the coping skills program described in this section. Children in this
program were fortunate to have a daily, therapeutic forum where they could learn
to cope with “dysfunctional selves, families and schools.” But what of the
low-literate adolescents who are not afforded this opportunity? In light of
the literature of childhood resiliency, in the following section we re-examine
family literacy programs for low-literate parents and the potential of these
programs to help children and parents adjust to violence and poverty.

Family Literacy to Foster Resilience

In her review of two decades of
investigation into models, methods, and data about resiliency, Masten (2001)
concludes that resilience is made up of ordinary rather than extraordinary
processes. She refers to “ordinary magic” as the unexceptional factors that
give children resilience against poverty, low-literate parents, and so forth.
One such factor that leads to resilience, according to Masten is parenting:

Effective parenting…also appears
to be protective with respect to antisocial behavior…Again, it is not clear
what processes might be involved, including genetic covariance. However, experimental
intervention designs that demonstrate a change in child behavior as a function
of changes in parenting behavior…support the conclusion of resilience
investigators that parenting quality has protective power, particularly against
antisocial behavior in risky environments. (p. 6)

The goal of family literacy is to enable
low-literate parents to help their children develop literacy skills while also
improving their own academic abilities. Through the process of strengthening
literacy among family members, these programs promote resilience by
strengthening bonds among family members, strengthening dispositional skills
such as positive self-esteem and autonomy, and modeling appropriate coping
skills such as self-reflection and problem solving.

What is Family Literacy?

Family literacy programs provide
services to families who have an adult with an educational need and who also
have a child ranging in age from birth to eight years. Family literacy, as
defined by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title I is unique in
that it is composed of four instructional components: (a) parenting education
so that parents become their child’s first teacher and full collaborators in
the education of their child, (b) interactive literacy activities between parents
and their children, (c) adult education so that parents may become economically
self sufficient (adult basic and secondary-level education and/or instruction
for English language learners), and (d) age-appropriate early childhood
education so that children can experience success in school and life (U.S.
Department of Education, 2003). Family literacy programs are based on the
concept that families need to receive a combination of services to make lasting
changes in their lives by improving their level of literacy.

Together, these four components
aim to improve the literacy and basic education levels of parents, help them
become partners in the education of their children, and support children in
reaching their full potential as learners. In addition to academic gains,
parents strengthen their dispositional skills of positive self-esteem and
autonomy. They become more self-reflective and learn problem-solving skills
needed to help their children succeed in school.

The children benefit in terms of their language and
literacy development through frequent parent-child book reading (Bus, van
Ijzendoorn & Pelligrini, 1995; Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998; Senechal,
LeFevre, Thomas, & Daley, 1998). Regardless of socio-economic status, Hart
and Risley (1995,1999) found that parents who talk with their children
influence the development of their children’s language use, vocabulary
development, and learning. Further, Darling and Westberg (2004) found through a
meta-analysis of the impact of parent involvement on reading acquisition of
children kindergarten to grade three, that training parents with specific
strategies about how to teach children to read produced positive results. In
addition to these academic gains, children who spend time bonding with their
parents and books also benefit from greater emotional and social growth that
fosters attachment, assertiveness, and many of the resiliency factors necessary
for their development (Werner, 1996; Powell, 2004; Pianta, 2004).

Community-Based Family literacy

The National Center for Family Literacy is
attempting to implement family literacy programs in non-traditional settings,
such as the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Salvation Army. Several issues arise
when implementing family literacy in community organizations. First, the
primary purpose of community organizations, such as the Salvation Army, is not
literacy development. Fostering resiliency and social competence among children
and families, however, is a major goal. In this vein, community workers
involved in family literacy organizations are usually not trained teachers.

Second, although national
legislation authorizing family literacy requires “sufficient intensity in terms
of hours, and of sufficient duration, to make sustainable changes in a family”
(U.S. Department of Education, 2003, p. 2), this may be a problem with
community programs that are operating with other goals. Typically, these
programs foster resiliency by providing a safe and nurturing environment for
youth that is removed from factors such as gang violence and drugs. The vision
is that these programs can provide their usual services and also strengthen
bonds among parents and children through literacy and thereby foster the
resiliency of the family as a whole.

The following steps in program implementation
were derived from analyzing these issues. First, the family literacy model was
introduced to community organizations. Second, staff analyzed the needs of
their organizations in regard to family literacy. From these self-analyses,
program goals were derived, leading to written implementation plans. For
example, although an Atlanta Salvation Army program operated an adult education
program under special grant funding, it needed to make the program permanent
with state funding. In comparison, Louisville sites did not have adult
education programs (except for a small volunteer program operating in one site
for special needs individuals). None of the programs had the other components
of family literacy, especially the parent-child interactive literacy component.
To implement an effective family literacy program, the crucial role of the
parent-child interactive literacy component needed to be understood and
implemented (see Grinder, Askov, Longoria Saenz, & Aldemir, 2005).

Discussion

In this paper we briefly reviewed
literature that illustrates how some U.S. children and their families live in a
culture of isolating familial and societal violence and suffering, which
influences negative educational outcomes. However, the literature on resiliency
supports the notion that despite extraordinary hardship some students and their
families who show deficiencies in intrapersonal and interpersonal competency
can achieve levels of personal and social resiliency. These skills can be
modeled, taught and learned, and literacy skills play a significant role in the
process. In this respect we think public schools and community-based
organizations are in excellent positions to provide environments, curricula,
and opportunities for students and their families.

While this paper presents potential roles of
literacy in fostering resiliency in coping skills and family literacy programs,
it does not address the role of the literacy educators in preparing future
teachers to make meaningful contributions in this area. Anecdotal conversations
lead us to believe that most literacy teachers are not aware of resiliency
research and its relevance to their practice. Although family literacy programs
are not required to adhere to national standards, and staff probably does not
know resiliency research literature, these programs do have the goal of
strengthening the family and deserve additional attention by educators.

Finally, we believe that if a part of literacy
educator preparation concentrated on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions
necessary to foster sustainable resiliency it would perhaps lead to improved
teacher performance in all areas of teaching. Literacy plays an important role
in tilting the balance from vulnerability and high-risk behaviors to more
hopeful life choices.

References

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Kilpatarick, D.G., Edmunds, C., & Seymour, A. (1992).
Rape in America: A report to the nation. Arlington, VA: National Center for Victims of Crime; Charleston, SC: Medical University of South Carolina,
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